It’s Scott here at Ben Kruse 18 Fore Life Foundation. With your support, we have surpassed sending out $4 Million! Shorter video this time….thank you for watching and being on our team.

Sincerely, Scott Kruse

Transcript:
Hey everybody, it’s Scott with 18 for life. We we’ve been wanting to do a recap of this year’s golf event. And I also just kind of wanted to wait until we had given away the 67 GTO, so we can talk about that a little bit as well. So again, if you’ll bear with me, I’m going to recap our, our, our, 2025 and cruise eight teams live charity golf event. The week leading up to our, our event, the beginning of June was really, really fun. We bring all of our teams together and everyone just does a great job. We got a amazing group of volunteers that help pull that off. By the time Friday got here, we were ready to roll the Elks. Looks so pretty. My wife does an amazing job with her team of decorating that place, and, it just looks so great this year. And, again, we wanted the 25th celebration to be special, and we felt like it turned out that way and in every way. Honestly, Amy Delay, gave a testimony. That truly, you know, showed her courage, her strength, her faith, her grit, her toughness. It was very well put together. It was very well delivered. And again, no surprise that she got a standing ovation and, and well-deserved and just a great job. We we’ve had amazing folks deliver that that testimony, and it’s always powerful. And and again, I know she was nervous. But if she’s listen, I just I want to tell her again how great of a job she did. Amy, you were amazing. And you are amazing. Mike Matheny, obviously, everyone was really excited just to hear him speak. And, you know, being an old coach, and being a Cardinals fan, I think anyone, anyone that enjoys anything about the Cardinals and, and then watched him play or watched him manage, it was just it was really fun to see someone coach at that high of a level and do it the right way and do with a lot of character and a lot of class. And, again, he challenged us. He shared with us, he motivated, motivated us. But, you know, more importantly, he was just another guest speaker that sat there was really impressed by everyone in that room. Our community, our small town, but again, more importantly, our community of 18 for life. People that come from all over, seeing that he could feel that in that room. And I always know that that’s going to, you know, be, very, very visible to the to the speaker. And so, again, he was very impressed. He seemed to have a great time. He signed every, autograph, he took every picture. And, again, just a very, very, very great man. And, so we were happy with all of that. The video this year, David’s video, Dave Robinson does an amazing job. But if you would ever go watch one video that he’s ever done, and I encourage you to go watch all of them if you’re bored and just looking for something to do, they’re just so they’re just so cool. But this year’s video truly sums up everything that has went on since 2000. It it it they did some things way back at the start. It, it really summed up the fact that we get together to celebrate, give and remember. And that’s what our charities about. And we’ve been blessed to be able to get together for the last 25 years. And those videos and this one especially, it just it just you really you just hit a home run. And I, and I encourage you to go to our website or check out Facebook and kind of search for it, and find that thing. But overall, the bank was just a great atmosphere. It’s a great group of people. It’s just a lot of love, a lot of goodness in that room, a lot of reunion, and a lot of old stories and then just a lot of laughs knowing that we’re going to hopefully get to just continue making, making memories. Now, the one thing I did say, though, is I got a hope about this charity. And my hope is, is that we find a cure for cancer and that we we can still have the party and we can still put on the golf tournament. We still have all the fun. But I just got this hope in my mind. that we won’t be worrying about raising money, because we’re going to hear that there is a cure of this cancer, all cancers. And and again, I’m going to hold out that hope 25 years went by really fast. And if you fast forward 25 more years, surely the goodness that’s going to come about. And so I’ll keep praying on that. I know you will too. And again. But until then, we’re just going to stick with doing what we do. You know, we’re on our way to $5 million now that we’ve, we passed 4 million. We’re at over four. We’re at almost, 4,100,000. And so that’s how that starts out. And we’re going to keep doing what we do. The golf, we just want to thank our golfers, the, the volunteers that helped out in the course there, those teams of people. And we want to thank our sponsors. The gift bag was amazing this year. Our sponsors just are real generous. And again, it allows us to give gifts to these golfers so that, you know, not only is the golf tournament fun, there’s a bunch of people there, but they’ll always want to come back, we hope. And that’s been the case. So we’ve always got pretty much a full tournament. And, and that’s important when you’re trying to raise money. So we thank volunteers, golfer sponsors. We thank you all one and all the the morning round was kind of wet, but I think the golfers were okay with that because the temperatures were so nice. And then in the afternoon for the entire round, I don’t know that I’ve ever played in in 18 for life in 25 years. And it been so pleasant all day long. And again, we, we kind of finish up around dark and, and we wrap it up 92 teams, one course one day. If you know of a tournament bigger than that, let me know. I’m always looking to to figure out if if we if we’ve got the biggest one day, four person scramble on one course or not. And I haven’t heard of one any bigger than ours, and so we’re proud of that. But, we had a great event, and, so. And we’re, we already got plans for next year in the works already, so we’re trying to get a jump on that. Today we gave away, 1967 GTO. Mike Gibson donated that. If you if you’ll find show me times live. They went Facebook live on there, and, Miss Dee was there, like, she’s always there, and, And you can watch that live drawing, Miss Katie. Fine. Find her out of Cape. Won the car. Her husband’s on his way down to get it as I’m doing this, and, they’re so excited. They said they never win anything. They were at our banquet. They bought two tickets. He bought one, and she bought one. And Miss Katie, was the winner. So we’re sending them home with the 1967, GTO. We just want to thank Mr. Gibson. I want to thank Sherm Smith for appraising that and doing all that work. I want to thank Mitch Wood for going to pick that thing up once he donated it. Bruce and Beth and Robert Shell, they they sold a whole lot of tickets for us, and we appreciate that. And and again, if you bought a ticket, just thanks for supporting that way. We really do appreciate that. And, and hopefully down the road we’ve got some more exciting things like that to do.That created a lot of buzz, a lot of excitement. And again, we found a new, a new owner for a really, really, really nice automobile. So, we hope everyone’s having a wonderful summer. We hope you have a wonderful 4th of July. Got a lot to be thankful for. And, again, we we’re going to thank you for supporting 18 for life in any way that you do. So, thanks for watching this video. And until next time, we’ll see you. We’ll see you later.